Union Headquarters

The brick office behind a Franklin doctor's house belonged to two physicians in turn. Daniel McPhail, a Scottish-born surgeon who reached Williamson County around 1828, died of dysentery in the Mexican War in 1846 and was brought home for burial with Masonic rites. His nephew Daniel Cliffe, raised in Franklin from age thirteen, inherited the practice. Cliffe is said to have joined the Confederate army and returned a Unionist, and he later led the Nashville and Decatur Railroad and the National Bank of Franklin. In 1973 the threatened office was moved a short way south.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Carnton — 1.6 mi
  The McGavock farm in Franklin, worked by 44 enslaved people in 1860, that became the largest field hospital of the Battle of Franklin.
• Fort Negley — 16 mi
  The largest inland stone fort of the Civil War, built in 1862 on St. Cloud Hill by more than 2,700 conscripted Black laborers, hundreds of whom died.
• National Museum of African American Music — 17 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.
• Ryman Auditorium — 17 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.

More markers nearby

• John H. Eaton — steps away
• Historic Franklin Masonic Hall — steps away
• Reconstruction — steps away
• The Franklin Riot of 1867 — steps away